Cyborgology

In January I wrote an essay for Cyborgology on the subject of technological autonomy and its implications for the environment. There’s no more important dynamic when it comes to understanding our relationship with machines and where they’re taking us.

Technological autonomy is shorthand for the idea that, once advanced technologies pass a certain stage of development, we lose our ability to control them. I generally use the phrase “de facto technological autonomy” to underscore that what’s being talked about is a loss of practical rather than literal control. Loss of practical control occurs for a number of reasons, among them the fact that the economies of modern societies have come to depend, completely, on various technologies. Remove those technologies and the economies collapse.

A striking example of this is the dilemma facing Japan as it contemplates whether to resume its dependence on nuclear energy in the wake of the post-tsunami meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors last year.

Since the meltdowns, operations at all the nation’s 54 nuclear reactors have been gradually suspended. Public concern has kept the plants offline despite increasingly strident warnings from officials there that without them the nation faces (as one publication put it) an “energy death spiral.” The threat is that without power sufficient to supply its manufacturing needs, Japan’s largest employers will be forced to abandon domestic production, initiating a process of “deindustrialization” that would cripple the economy. These concerns are exacerbated by uncertainties regarding international oil supplies and the prognosis that this coming summer may be unusually hot, prompting a spike in energy demands.

The dilemma is an excruciating one. The nation’s citizens are essentially being told that they must welcome back into their midst an industry that’s made whole towns uninhabitable and that’s undermined confidence in their food supply, not to mention their officials. The alternative is widespread unemployment and poverty. In other words, while it’s literally possible to shut down the reactors permanently, practically speaking Japan may have no choice but to turn them back on. That’s de facto technological autonomy.

Global warming doubles the bind. Without the reactors, Japan will make up some of its energy deficit with fossil fuels, thereby increasing its emissions of greenhouse gases.

Japan’s distinction is that the tsunami has forced it to confront the issue of technological autonomy sooner than other industrialized countries. Their time (our time) will come.

This post is also available on Doug Hills personal blog: The Question Concerning Technology.

As the trial of mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik proceeds in Norway this week, it’s worth noting a technology-related anomaly in the press coverage of his crimes.

Breivik is the right-wing terrorist who killed more than 70 people, most of them students attending an island summer camp, in July 2011. At the time, it was widely noted that significant sections of his “European Declaration of Independence” had been lifted verbatim from Ted Kaczynski’s “Industrial Society and Its Future,” aka “the Unabomber Manifesto.” What wasn’t noted was how dramatically at odds Breivik’s beliefs are from Kaczynski’s.

Like Kaczynski, Breivik hates leftists, and it was Kaczynski’s passages excoriating those enemies that Breivik copied. But where the Unabomber set out to destroy the Kingdom of Technology, Breivik spoke of using technology – technology in general, that is, in addition to bombs and guns – to further his goals. His agenda was aimed at cleansing European nations of “multicultural” influences. Toward that end, he urged that the technological advantage of European nations be widened, recommending that twenty per cent of their national budgets be reserved “for research and development in relation to science and technology.” (more…)

Roger Boisjoly has died.

The name may not ring a bell, but Boisjoly’s place in history certainly will: He was the engineer who tried in vain to persuade NASA that it was unsafe to launch the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986.

The Challenger explosion remains today one of our most evocative images of technology gone wrong. This is due in part to the personal nature of the tragedy – the schoolteacher onboard, the family members watching – and in part to the subsequent revelations that NASA proceeded with the launch despite Boisjoly’s warnings.

My intention here is not to rehash the chain of events that led to the Challenger’s demise, but to show how some of those events demonstrate patterns of error that are commonplace – indeed, almost inevitable – in the operation of complex technological systems. (more…)

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that what the scientists are saying about global warming – that we are headed for all manner of catastrophic changes in the environment unless fossil fuel emissions are drastically reduced, immediately – is accurate.

Also for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the world’s political leaders and the citizens they represent are sane, and that, therefore, they would like to avoid those catastrophic changes in the environment.

Assuming both propositions to be true, it would seem reasonable to ask ourselves whether it’s possible to take the necessary actions that would forestall those changes. In order to answer yes to that question we will need to overcome a series of challenges that can collectively be described as technological autonomy.

Technological autonomy is a shorthand way of expressing the idea that our technologies and technological systems have become so ubiquitous, so intertwined, and so powerful that they are no longer in our control. This autonomy is due to the accumulated force of the technologies themselves and also to our utter dependence on them. (more…)

Start at 13:42 – 15:37 for images of Zuccotti Park being dismantled

The clearing of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators from the streets of various cities over the past few weeks has been a strikingly naked demonstration of the characteristic properties of what Jacques Ellul called “technique.”

Like other philosophers, Ellul thought of technology more as a state of being than as a collection of artifacts. “Technique” is the word he used to describe a phenomenon that includes, in addition to machines, the systems in which machines exist, the people who are enmeshed in those systems, and the modes of thought that promote the effective functioning of those systems.

In The Technological Society, Ellul called technique “the translation into action of man’s concern to master things by means of reason, to account for what is subconscious, make quantitative what is qualitative, make clear and precise the outlines of nature, take hold of chaos and put order into it.” The machine, he added, is “pure technique… the ideal toward which technique strives.” (more…)